Ashes to ashes

A short story by Ken Gray

From a distance, the amber box on the shelf before me tells no story whatsoever. A beautifully crafted box of coloured strips is no mere bookend. Someone had taken a lot of time to assemble something beautiful for . . .  God? Possibly hollow, I have no idea what is inside; no idea what it does; no idea who put it there. The box offers no clue about why, or when it was placed there. It clashes with the spines of volumes of church history, systematic theology, liturgical commentary, and published collections of sermons, all assembled over, I assume, many years.

Where do these books come from I wonder? The remnants of former clergy libraries? Unread books donated by well-meaning parishioners? Left-overs from church jumble sales? There is likely a bit of everything in this small collection of poetry and prose, of commentary and criticism, of current and historical questions and concerns.

The collection looks well organized, but by whom? Libraries are a community of words in which a librarian curates the relationships. The librarian not only collects volumes for storage, cataloguing, and display; they also determine where each book is placed on the shelf. There are rules about what goes where on library shelves, rules based on subject matter, author name, publication date, and other classification details.

Author Barbara Kingsolver once wrote that one classification system, the Dewey Decimal System, saved her creative and imaginative life. Growing up in rural Kentucky, her local librarian pointed her beyond the walls of the library, past the physical and cultural boundaries of her home town, out into the world. Dewey, the library, and books, whet her appetite for a lifetime of travel, experience, and a career as a writer.

On the sturdy shelf in front of me, arranged row on row, like grave markers in a Belgium military cemetery, are weighty hard-covered tomes, a couple bound in leather, while others are cased in cardboard, paper, cloth, or vinyl. Once opened, such books tell their own story, of how previous generations wrestled with questions of faith, hope, love, and action — everything from Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail; to Archbishop Michael Ramsey’s The Gospel and the Catholic Church; including Terry Waite’s Taken on Trust; and more recent publications including Desmond Tutu’s The Book of Forgiving. The book spines are dark red, maroon, black, and other sombre colours. The amber box is a shaft of light in literate darkness.

Rising from my chair near the window, I take the box from the shelf and return to my table. The box is neither large nor small; it looks to be about five inches high, approximately nine inches long, and maybe seven inches deep. It is surprisingly heavy. There are no obvious markings. I discover some sort of plug centered on the bottom panel. Most telling, is that the contents of the box appear to shift, sort of like sand on a beach. Aha! Now I know! Not sand . . . but the box contains ashes, the cremated remains of a human being. (Possibly a former librarian?).

But why put them here? Cremains are sometimes left behind at a church after a funeral service by families or friends of the deceased who have not decided about permanent committal. Typically, in such situations, cremains are placed underneath an altar. Sometimes folks forget about them, so they remain in chapel storage, often for years. Sometimes, they are so poorly labelled that successive generations of clergy and altar guild volunteers face a conundrum:  After a time, do you place unclaimed, anonymous remains in some sort of “mass grave” somewhere on church property? The easiest solution is to just leave them in place under an altar.

Never, however, have I heard of committing remains to a parish library. But here we are. Ashes to ashes; dust to dust . . . In this case, ashes to the shelf. Given that today is Saturday and there’s no one around to ask, I shall let my imagination run wild. If a library is a community of words, it makes sense to include a representative of the community of saints. The community of speech meets the community of presence, even temporarily so. Maybe we should install libraries in columbariums — a perpetual care archive? We tell stories about our lives; we tell stories through our lives. I find this connection beautiful, even peaceful.

If I am at peace, my phone tells me I am also late for an afternoon meeting across town. Time to move on. Leaving the library with its mysterious occupant returned to its shelf, I pass my office en route to the parking lot. I spy some mail on the my office desk. Two are event notifications, messages from “head office” that can wait for another time. The third, however, looks different. A quick slash with a letter opener confirms my hunch; two sheets of textured off-white paper with a hand-written note inside, likely written with a good old fashioned blue ink fountain pen. The note reads:

To whom it may concern:
Re: The late Mavis Chesterton
d. March 17, 2025

We write today, with some embarrassment. regarding the remains of our late mother, Mavis Chesterton, who was buried from your church a few months ago. Following the lovely service conducted by the minister — whose name we have forgotten — we now realize that we forgot something else: The remains of our dear departed mother.

Anxious to catch a train once the reception ended, we rushed out the door neglecting to collect our mother’s remains. We laterally realized our mistake as we now have a place for interment arranged here. To the best of our recollection, we last had them in hand while visiting the library she once oversaw.

That truly unique collection of books was her pride and joy. Yes, we know that fewer and fewer people access small parish libraries these days, given the advantages of online library access, the easiness of one-click purchase technology, the popularity of e-readers generally, and the shorter attention spans of many adult readers. Our mother never fully appreciated this trend. So she continued to vigorously collect titles she thought might interest parishioners. This is why her little library is so well stocked with many fiction and non-fiction classics. It even includes some titles written by our great, great grandfather, including: The Man who was Thursday; Orthodoxy; and our favourite detective series, Father Brown.

We digress. We think we left Mother on the table by the library window. Hopefully someone has placed it in a secure location. We would greatly appreciate if someone could arrange for courier delivery; we will certainly pay for any shipping costs. With thanks for your assistance and understanding, Gilian and Keith Chesterton.

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